Baldwins new list

[PWA 1967]

Just been looking at the Baldwins new list.

Although there is quite a lot in it........ some of the prices seem a little high taking into consideration the condition IMO.

The 1844 Farthing does not look the best .........infact its horrible for £495.

Sorry i cant put the link up but the list is online and worth a look through.

Its good they have put the provenance on quite a lot of the half pennies.

Pete.

[VickySilver]

Certainly agreed on that! I used to always find a couple of bits I had to have at what were even then moderately highly priced.

 I am overall worried for Baldwin as with the departure of Steve, they seem to be following in some of the steps of Spink who in an associated sense was degraded much after losing him also and the departure of Mark Rasmussen - but perhaps for different reasons. Gibbons seem the corporate monster that inhaled the smaller Baldwin's & I no longer see the latter as a somewhat maverick independent (which it is not of course).

[azda]

Agreed again, their prices are on the high side, even their estimates in auction are quite high considering their 24% commission on top of the hammer. As vickysilver said, i think its down to the corporate monster of Gibbons, although they were quite pricey to start with before Gibbons took them over.

 

[alfnail]

5 hours ago, PWA 1967 said:

Just been looking at the Baldwins new list.

Although there is quite a lot in it........ some of the prices seem a little high taking into consideration the condition IMO.

The 1844 Farthing does not look the best .........infact its horrible for £495.

Sorry i cant put the link up but the list is online and worth a look through.

Its good they have put the provenance on quite a lot of the half pennies.

Pete.

Hi Pete, your post reminded me of the one I bought on ebay a few years back, sold as a group of 4 half pennies (!), bought for £40 and sold the rest for well over that.....so essentially a 'freebie'.......happy hunting

[PWA 1967]

A song comes to mind 

SOME GUYS HAVE ALL THE LUCK

That was a good buy Ian to go with all the others you have had 

[Peter]

4 hours ago, alfnail said:

Hi Pete, your post reminded me of the one I bought on ebay a few years back, sold as a group of 4 half pennies (!), bought for £40 and sold the rest for well over that.....so essentially a 'freebie'.......happy hunting

Ooooh...I like that. The toning is spot on

[Colin G.]

Very nice 

[alfnail]

Being a penny collector I don't have a great deal of knowledge on Farthings; just wondered if the Farthing experts could perhaps give me a rough idea of value for this 1844 specimen.

[jaggy]

I just had a look at their sixpences and I am unimpressed. High prices for questionable quality.

[Stuntman]

2 hours ago, alfnail said:

Being a penny collector I don't have a great deal of knowledge on Farthings; just wondered if the Farthing experts could perhaps give me a rough idea of value for this 1844 specimen.

I'm no expert, but Colin Cooke has one for sale at the moment which looks broadly similar in grade to yours, for £550.  Theirs is graded 'About EF'.  I think the reverse of yours is perhaps less sharp than the Colin Cooke coin and the obverse broadly similar.  My first thought on your nice, honest, evenly toned coin was it would cost about £500 from a dealer 

http://colincooke.com/coin_pages/victcopperissue.html

[RLC35]

On 8/3/2016 at 7:00 AM, alfnail said:

Hi Pete, your post reminded me of the one I bought on ebay a few years back, sold as a group of 4 half pennies (!), bought for £40 and sold the rest for well over that.....so essentially a 'freebie'.......happy hunting

 

I like this coin much better than the one on Colin Cooke's site. The coloring on this one is much better, and the other one has staining/diirt that takes away from the coin's apprearence. CC's has a slightly better Reverse though, though not by that much. Both are desirable coins.

 

[Peter]

I was looking at LC's previous sales and this one is up there. I have 2 examples but need to up my game on this date (and the 3 variations)

[alfnail]

Many thanks for feedback on my 1844 Farthing, have just looked myself at past sales on LCA website and see that it does compare well with all their past sales, apart from one which sold for £1400 +BP which is clearly much better

[Peter]

12 hours ago, alfnail said:

Many thanks for feedback on my 1844 Farthing, have just looked myself at past sales on LCA website and see that it does compare well with all their past sales, apart from one which sold for £1400 +BP which is clearly much better

That sold on provenance.

[PWA 1967]

Received an investment catalogue today from stanley gibbons.

Needless to say most of it is made up of coins for the first time.

But not any copper / bronze pennies in it 

[Peter]

Gibbons play so hard on the investment side no doubt aiming at dumb and dumber. Pete are all the coins slabbed?

[PWA 1967]

They are paper assetts Peter they dont post them to have a look at and put in a tray .

In answer to your question none are in slabs.

 

Edited August 15, 2016 by PWA 1967

[Paulus]

3 minutes ago, PWA 1967 said:

They are paper assetts Peter they dont post them to have a look at and put in a tray .

In answer to your question none are in slabs.

 

[rooneydog]

10 minutes ago, PWA 1967 said:

They are paper assetts Peter they dont post them to have a look at and put in a tray .

In answer to your question none are in slabs.

 

Paper coins whatever next banknotes 

[PWA 1967]

11 hours ago, Peter said:

Gibbons play so hard on the investment side no doubt aiming at dumb and dumber. Pete are all the coins slabbed?

People investing over £500K are probably quite happy to be called dumb 

[VickySilver]

I remember Baldwin trotting out this concept some years ago & believe they would bid on coins in their own auction for this fund - which at th time seemed a conflict of interest. Do people in any numbers invest their money this way? Can you post images of the offering literature Pete?

[jaggy]

Obviously one can make money on coins which is why we have dealers and auction houses. I would class coins as an 'alternative investment' a bit like art or antiques. In a large portfolio, one might have a couple of percent invested that way. The problem is that people like Merrill Lynch who manage billions in investments probably don't have the expertise for this kind of investment and, for that reason, will avoid it. So coins as an investment are likely to be a marginal product at best. Gibbons might fancy themselves as an investment manager but they will always be on the fringes of the financial community.

[Mr T]

Seems vaguely reminiscent of The Rare Coin Company in Australia which invested money in coins for you: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-11/rare-coin-collapse-feature/4815042

[davidrj]

The one I remember was the Afinsa scandal, the once leading stamp company in Portugal

 

 

 

 

 

[Rob]

Frankly, that's just a bad case of 'An idiot and their money are soon parted'. An annual return of 16% means a coin would have to appreciate by at least 40% on typical hammer prices in the first year just to cover costs. 20% commission to buy at auction, the investment company's annual charge - say 4%, plus the 16% promised return. They might have assumed that they would purchase privately at typical hammer prices, but the material simply isn't available to buy. A fundamental part of investments is liquidity, which has never been a feature of coins. When something can be off the market for a hundred years, who is going to invest in it? When a coin changes hands too frequently it usually raises the question as to what is wrong with it.

Although coins are clearly an asset, liquidity issues mean they can only ever be peripheral investments.

In September the BBC is going to have 'investment coins' as the target for one of its 'Rip-off Britain' programmes. GeoffT is on it giving a collector's viewpoint. I was asked to give a dealer's view, but declined on the grounds that the programme title did not offer the possibility of a balanced argument. Whilst I felt that there were undoubtedly companies pushing material of questionable investment quality, the most important issue was that of caveat emptor, which in today's nanny state mentality is increasingly legislated to irrelevance. It never ceases to amaze me that people will spend thousands on something they know nothing about, yet would insist on taking a potential new car for a drive, or would ensure that the new carpet or curtains matched the existing decor.

People need to be held more accountable for their own actions rather than going down the no-win, no-fee route, which absolves the consumer of any responsibility.